Read Online Cage's Bend by Carter Coleman - Free Book Online Page B

wrists.
    “You’ve got to be kidding,” I say. “For what?”
    “Fraud.”
    “And resisting arrest,” says the other cop. “And assaulting an officer.”
    The cop from church leads me around the house, reading my rights. Around front I see Sylvia peeking out of an upstairs bathroom window. She’s probably flushing her stash down the toilet. “You going to bail me out, Harper?”
    Harper doesn’t say yes. He looks at me with tears in the corners of his eyes. “I’ll follow you down in your Bronco.”
    One cop shoves me in the back of the squad car, knocking my head against the door frame. I see Harper asking them something. Suddenly I feel trapped in a cage. “You insular catamite pederasts!” I yell and thrash about the seat. The handcuffs cut deeper into my wrists. My plans are crumbling around me. If I can’t get out and finish a boat, I’ll never cover my debts. The whole house of cards will fall. The postdated checks will come due soon and the mountain of debt will rise up like a volcanic atoll. The space between the wire mesh and windows shrinks until I can barely breathe. I kick the wire but it doesn’t bend. “This isn’t fair! I don’t deserve this! I didn’t do anything,” I scream as the cops get in the car. I take a deep breath and lower my voice. “Will you please let me tell my girlfriend good-bye?”
    “Kiss your own ass good-bye,” one cop says from the passenger seat without turning his head.
    “Fuck you!” I kick one foot through the door window, spraying the glass outside on the road.
    “That was cooperative,” the other cop says, opening his door.
    “Cage.” Harper’s face, lit up by the car lights coming up the street, seems to float in the hole in the window. “Get ahold of yourself. You’re just making it worse.”
    One cop opens the other door, drags me out by my collar, and lets me fall on the shoulder. His knee on my back, he grips my head with one hand and grinds my face into the shell gravel, crushing my nose and tearing my lips for a couple of seconds. He says into my ear, “You just lay quiet until the wagon gets here. You’re going to love the wagon.”
    “Cage.” Sylvia sits on her knees and cradles my head. Her face is dark, haloed by the red taillights of the car.
    “Your face would launch a thousand ships.” I remember the first time I told her that. I’d towed the sloop from the harbor and was unloading it in front of the Taylors’ house. She was walking down the road toward the beach and stopped and asked what I was going to do with her. Rebuild her, I’d replied. Sail her to Ireland at the end of the summer, pay homage to my progenitors. She laughed and said she always wanted to crew across the Atlantic. You can christen her, I said. Your face would launch a thousand ships.
    “God, Cage, why?”
    “The checks. Those goddamn checks.”
    “They’ll let you out, right?” She’s sobbing. “You’ll get out soon.”
    “I don’t know. Someone might have to bail me out.”
    “Okay,” she says.
    Headlights from another car suddenly illuminate Sylvia, and the sound of its idling drowns out her sobs. She looks younger than I’ve ever seen her, only a child. Two more cops walk into the light. One glances down at me, then at the cop I hit, who is leaning on the trunk of the squad car smoking a cigarette. “Fucker broke my finger when I tackled him.”
    “Another brat too big for his britches?”
    The cop exhales smoke and nods. “The waffle treatment.”
    “Excuse me, miss,” the new one says. Staring up from his legs is like sighting up a tree trunk. “Move away now.”
    He picks me up by my belt and walks me along the road like I was a rag doll, then tosses me face-first through the open rear doors of a van. I twist and take the impact on my shoulder then roll onto my back.
    “Don’t hurt him!” Sylvia shrieks.
    I’m trying to stand up when the doors close and it’s dark except in the front, through the mesh, where the glare of the